While the nation's biggest pay TV providers lost 150,000 subscribers last quarter, the latest data from the Leichtman Research Group indications that the nation's largest phone and cable companies managed to see a net gain in 700,000 broadband customers during the same quarter. While telcos continue to leech cable TV customers from cable operators due to improved features, the cable companies saw 83% of the net broadband additions for the quarter largely thanks to faster speeds.
Leichtman notes that the top cable companies added about 580,000 subscribers, representing roughly 133% of the net additions for the top cable companies during the third quarter. In contrast, the top telephone companies added about 120,000 broadband subscribers in 3Q 2014 -- compared to a gain of about 80,000 during the third quarter one year earlier.
Leichtman notes that cable's dominance in terms of broadband market share has been occurring for most of the last year. That's in large part thanks to AT&T and Verizon backing away from DSL markets they don't want to upgrade; in many cases they're literally driving those customers to cable operators through a one-two punch of apathy and price hikes.
"Despite there being 86.6 million broadband subscribers in the US via major cable and Telco providers, the industry has added subscribers at a faster pace over the past year than it did over the prior year," said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. "Over the past year, cable companies accounted for 86% of the 2.9 million net broadband adds."
